Creatures of the Abyss Page 3

  _Three_

  Terry stared incredulously. Someone moved beside him. It was Davis. Hespoke in a dry voice.

  "I would think," he said detachedly, "that _La Rubia_ could catch aboatload of fish in that water with a single haul of her nets. Certainlywith two."

  Terry turned his head.

  "But what is it? What makes these fish gather like this?"

  "An interesting question," said Davis. "We'll try to find out how ithappens. Even more interesting, I'd like to know why."

  He moved away along the deck. Terry went close to the side rail. A fewminutes later the startling glare of one of the side searchlights smoteupon the water away from the incredible scene. It moved slowly back andforth. Where the light struck, the sea seemed totally commonplace. Nofish could be seen. Then the white beam swept here and there in jerkyleapings. There was nothing unusual on the surface, nothing beyond thelimit of brightness, where the sea turned dark.

  Deirdre said at Terry's side, "We didn't really expect this! I'm goingto get a sample of the water, Terry. Want to help?"

  She ignored his haughty withdrawal of the afternoon, and he could notstand on his dignity in the presence of such an incredible phenomenon.She got a water bucket from the nearby rack. A wave sprung up as shetried to fill the bucket overside. It touched her hand and she criedout. Terry jerked her back by the shoulder. The bucket bumped againstthe _Esperance's_ side, hanging on the line attached to the rail.

  "What's the matter?"

  "It stung! The water stung! Like a nettle!" Shaking a little, Deirdrerubbed her wet hand with the other. "It doesn't hurt now, but it waslike a stinging nettle--or an electric shock!"

  Terry hauled in the bucket and set it down. He leaned far over the rail.He plunged his hand into a lifting pinnacle of the sea. Instantly, hisskin felt as if pricked by ten thousand needles. But his muscles did notcontract as they would in an electric shock. The sensation was on thesurface of his skin alone.

  He shook his head impatiently. He put his finger in the bucket he'dlifted to the deck. There was no unusual sensation. He dipped oversideagain. Again acute and startling hurt, from the mere contact with thewater.

  Deirdre still rubbed her hand. She said in a queer, surprised voice,

  "Like pins and needles. It's like--like the fish-driving paddle! Butworse! Much worse!"

  Terry looked again at the sea glittering with the swarms of fish inhopeless, panicked agitation, confined in a specific narrow compass bysomething unguessable. The searchlight continued to flick here andthere. The _Esperance_ drifted away from the edge of brightness. Terryput his hand overside once more, and once more he felt the stinging,nettle-like sensation. He got a fresh bucket of water from overside. Ondeck, there was no strange sensation when he dipped his hand in it.

  The searchlight went out abruptly and only a faint and quickly dimmingreddish glow came from it. That too died.

  Davis' voice gave orders. Terry said sharply, "Wait a minute!" He beganto explain about the stinging of the water. But then he said, "Deirdre,you tell him! I'm going to put a submarine ear overboard. At the leastwe'll get fish noises on a new scale. But I've got an idea ... don'tsail into the bright circle yet."

  He got out the submarine ear and the recorder he'd made ready thatafternoon. He started the recorder. Then he trailed the microphoneoverside. The sounds would be heard live through the speaker and theywould be taped at the same time. At first, a blaring, confused soundcame through. Terry turned down the volume.

  He heard gruntings and chirpings and rustlings. Fish made thosenoises--not all fish, but certain species. These shrill, squeakingnoises were the protests of frightened porpoises. But under and throughall other sounds, a steady, unvarying hum could be easily detected.Terry had never heard anything quite like it. Its pitch was the same asthat of a sixty-cycle frequency, but its tone quality was somehowsardonic and snarling. The word that came into Terry's mind was "nasty."Yes, it was a nasty sound. One didn't like it. One would want to getaway from it. In the air the same unpleasant sensation is produced bynoises that make one's flesh crawl.

  Terry straightened up from where the recorder played upon the wet deck.Davis and Deirdre had come to listen, in the strange darkness under thesails of the _Esperance_.

  "I've got a sort of hunch," said Terry slowly. "Let's sail across thebright patch. I'll record the sea noises all the way. I've a feelingthat that hum means something."

  "It's not what you'd call an ordinary sound," said Davis.

  He raised his voice. One of the crew-cuts was at the schooner's wheel.He spun it. The sails filled, and the rattling of flapping canvas diedaway. The _Esperance_ gathered way and moved swiftly from the glitteringcircle, came about, and sailed again toward the shining area. She gotcloser and closer to the boundary.

  The recorder continued to give out the confused and frightened noises ofthe sea creatures, but under and through their sounds there remained thenasty and sardonic hum. It grew louder and more unpleasant--much louderin proportion to the fish sounds. At the very boundary of the brightspace it was loudest of all.

  But as the yacht went on, the hum dimmed. At the very center of thecircle where the glitterings were brightest, the humming sound wasoverwhelmed by the submarine tumult of senseless fish voices. Terrydipped his hand here. The tingling was almost tolerable, but not quite.

  Davis hauled more buckets of water to the deck. In two of them he foundsome fish, so dense was the finny multitude. Then the yacht neared thefarthest limit of the bright circle. The hum from the recordinginstrument grew progressively louder. Again, at the very edge of theshining water, it was loudest.

  The _Esperance_ sailed across the live boundary and into the dark sea.As the boat went on, the sound dimmed....

  "Definitely loudest," said Terry absorbedly, "at the edge of the circleof fish. At the line the fish couldn't cross to escape. It is if therewere an electric fence in the sea. It felt like that, too. But thereisn't any fence."

  Davis asked evenly, "Question: what holds them crowded?"

  Terry said again, groping in his mind, "They act like fish in a closingnet. I've seen something like this once, when a purse-seine was hauled.Those fish were frantic because they couldn't get away. Just likethese."

  "Why can't they get away?" asked Davis grimly. "We haven't seen anythingholding them."

  "But we heard something," pointed out Deirdre. "The hum. That may bewhat closes them in."

  Her father made a grunting noise. "We'll see about that."

  He moved away, back to the stern. In moments, the _Esperance_ wasbeating upwind. Presently, she headed back toward her previous position,but outside the brightness. Terry could see dark silhouettes movingabout near the yacht's wheel. Then he saw another brightness at theeastern horizon, but that was in the sky. Almost as soon as he noticedit, the moon peered over the edge of the world, and climbed slowly tofull view, and then swam up among the lower-hanging stars.

  Immediately, the look of the sea was different. The waves no longerseemed to race the darkness with only star glitters on their flanks. Thefigures at the _Esperance's_ stern were now quite distinct in themoonlight.

  "You said a very sensible thing, Deirdre," said Terry. "I thought of thefish-driving paddle and its effects, but I was ashamed to mention it. Ithought it would sound foolish. But when you said it, it didn't."

  "I have a talent," said Deirdre, "for making foolish things soundsensible. Or perhaps the reverse. I'm going to say a sensible thing now.We haven't had dinner. I'm going to fix something to eat."

  "You won't get anybody to go belowdecks right now!" said Terry.

  "I thought of that," she told him. "Sandwiches."

  She went below. Terry continued to watch, while figures at the stern ofthe schooner went through an involved process of visual measurement. Itwas not simple to determine the dimensions of a patch of shimmeringlight flashes from a boat in motion. But presently, Davis came towardhim.

  "It's thirteen hundred yards across," he told Terry. "Plus or minu
stwenty."

  "I didn't expect all this," Davis said, frowning. "I've been makingguesses and hoping fervently that I was wrong. And I have been, but eachtime the proof that I was wrong has led to new guesses, and I'm afraidto think those guesses may be right."

  "I can't begin to guess yet," said Terry.

  "You will!" Davis assured him. "You will! You try to add up things.... Ahalf-mile-wide patch of foam that piles up thirty feet above thesea...."

  "And into which," Terry interrupted, "a sailing ship does not sink butdrops out of sight as if there were a hole in the sea."

  Davis turned sharply toward him.

  "There were some photographs and a newspaper clipping on the cabintable," explained Terry. "I suspected they might have been put there forme to see."

  "Deirdre, perhaps," said Davis. "She's resolved to involve you in this.You've got scruples, so she suspects you of having brains. Yes. You'lladd those things up. You'll include the remarkable success of a fishingboat named _La Rubia_ and the fact that she sometimes brings in verystrange fish ... And then you'll add ..."

  His eyes flickered aloft. A shooting star streaked across one-third ofthe sky leaving a trail of light behind it. Then it went out.

  "You'll even be tempted," said Davis, "to include something like that inyour guesses! And then you'll try to come up with a total for the lot.Then you'll be as troubled as I am."

  He paused a moment.

  "You said you wanted to be put ashore as soon as the gadget you madetoday was tested. I hope you've changed your mind, or will. Thattape-recording may mean something to somebody. We wouldn't have heardthat very singular noise but for you."

  "I withdraw the business of going ashore," said Terry uncomfortably."I'm going to ask another question. What are those little spheres that Isaw in the photographs on the cabin table? Were they found fastened tothe fish?"

  "So I'm told," said Davis. "They are made of plastic. One was on a fishcaught by a chief petty officer of the United States Navy. Four havebeen found on fish brought into the market by _La Rubia_. They couldconceivably be a joke, but it's very elaborate! Somebody tried to cutone open and it burst to hell-and-gone. Terrific pressure inside. Themetal parts inside were iridium. The others haven't been cut open.They're--" Davis' tone was dry. "They're being studied."

  A figure came out of the forecastle and walked aft. It was Nick. Hestopped to say, "I called Manila and got a loran fix on us. We're rightat the place _La Rubia_ heads for every time she sneaks away from therest of the fishing fleet. It seems that she hauls her nets yonder."

  He nodded toward the circular area of luminosity on the sea. "It lookssmaller than when I went below deck."

  Davis stared. He seemed to stiffen.

  "It does. We'll make sure."

  He went aft. Deirdre came up with sandwiches. Terry took the tray fromher and followed her toward the others.

  "Cigars, cigarettes, candy, sandwiches?" she asked cheerfully.

  Davis was back at the task of measuring the angle subtended by the patchof shining sea, and then closely estimating its distance from the_Esperance_. He said, "It _is_ smaller. Eleven hundred yards, now."

  "When _La Rubia_ was here today," said Terry, "it might have been acouple of miles across. Even that would be a terrific concentration offish! They're not all at the surface."

  Davis said with impatience, seemingly directed against himself, "It'snarrowed two hundred yards in the past half-hour. It must be tendingtoward something! There has to be a conclusion to it! Something must beabout to happen!"

  Deirdre said slowly, "If it's the equivalent of a seine being hauled,with a hum instead of a net, what's going to happen when it's time forthe fish to be boated?"

  Davis ignored her for a moment. Then he said irritably, "Everyone seemsto have more brains than I do! Tony, break out those gun-cameras. Nick,get back and report if the bright spot's getting any smaller. I wish youweren't here, Deirdre!"

  The two crew-cuts moved to obey. Terry, alone, had no specific dutyassigned to him on the yacht, unless tending to the recorder was it. Hebent over the instrument which was playing in the air anything that atrailing microphone picked up under water. He raised the volume atrifle. He could still hear the singular noises of the agitated fishmixed in with the thin, strangely offensive humming sound. He heardsmall thumpings, and realized that they were the footfalls of hiscompanions on the deck of the _Esperance_, transmitted to the water. Heheard ...

  Tony came abovedecks with an armful of mysterious-looking objects whichcould not be seen quite clearly in the slanting moonlight. He put two ofthem down by the wheel and passed out the others. He silently left onefor Terry and another for Deirdre, while Terry adjusted tone and volumeon the recorder for maximum clarity.

  "What are those?" asked Terry.

  "Cameras," said Deirdre. "Mounted on rifle stocks, with flashbulbs inthe reflectors. You aim, pull the trigger, and the shutter opens as theflashbulb goes off. So you get a picture of whatever you aim at, nightor day."

  "Why ..."

  "There was a time when my father thought they might be useful," saidDeirdre. "Then it looked like they wouldn't. Now it looks like theymay."

  Terry was tempted to say, "Useful for what?" But Davis' vague talk ofunpleasant wrong guesses which led to even less pleasant ones hadalready been an admission that no convincing answer could be given him.Davis came over to him.

  "This has me worried," he said in a frustrated tone of indecision. "Wemust be near the end of some process that I didn't suspect, and theconclusion of which I can't guess. I don't know what it is, and I don'tknow what it's for. I only know what it's tied in with."

  Terry said absorbedly, "Two or three times I've picked up some new kindsof sounds. You might call them mooing noises. They're very faint, as ifthey were far away, and there are long intervals between them. I don'tthink they come from the surface."

  Davis made an irresolute gesture. He seemed to hesitate over somethinghe was inclined to accept. Deirdre protested before he could speak. "Idon't think what you're thinking is right!" she said firmly. "Not a bitof it! Whatever happens will be connected with the fish. _La Rubia_ hasbeen around this sort of thing over and over again! We haven't beenrunning the engine and we haven't been making any specific noises in thewater to arouse curiosity! If anything were going to happen to us, itwould have happened to _La Rubia_ before now! It would be ridiculous torun away just because I'm on board!"

  Terry, bent intently over the recorder, suddenly felt a cold chill runup and down his spine. His mind told him it was ridiculous to associatedistant mooing sounds, underwater, with a completely unprecedented,frantic gathering of fish into one small area, and come up with thethought that something monstrous and plaintive was coming blindly tofeed upon fellow creatures of the sea. There was nothing to justify thethought. It was out of all reason. But his spine crawled, just the same.

  "The circle's only eight hundred yards across, now," said Davis,uneasily. "The fish can't crowd together any closer! But Doug wentoverboard with diving goggles, and he says there's a column ofbrightness as far down as he can make out."

  Terry looked up.

  "He went overboard? Didn't he tingle?"

  "He said it was like baby nettles all over," Davis protested, as if itwere someone's fault. "But he didn't sting after he came out. It mustbe ..."

  A mooing sound came out of the recorder. It was fainter than the othersounds and very far away. It must have been of terrific volume where itoriginated. It lasted for many seconds, then stopped.

  "I should have been recording," said Terry. "That sound comes up aboutevery five minutes. I'll catch it next time."

  Davis went away, as if he wanted to miss the noise and the decision itwould force upon him. Yet Terry told himself obstinately that there wasno reason to connect the mooing sound with the crazed fish herd half amile away. But somehow he couldn't help thinking there might be aconnection.

  The ship's clock sounded seven bells. Deirdre said, "The brightness isreally sm
aller now!" The patch of flashes was no more than half itsoriginal size. Terry pressed the recording button and straightened up tolook more closely. Right then Deirdre said sharply, "Listen!"

  Something new and quite unlike the mooing noise now came out of therecorder.

  "Get your father," commanded Terry. "Something's coming from somewhere!"

  Deirdre ran across the heaving deck. Terry shifted position so he couldmanipulate the microphone hanging over the yacht's side into the water.Davis arrived. His voice was suddenly strained and grim. "Something'scoming?" he demanded. "Can you hear any engine noise?"

  "Listen to it," said Terry. "I'm trying to get its bearing."

  He turned the wire by which the submarine ear hung from the rail. Thechirpings and squealings and squeakings changed volume as the microphoneturned. But the new sound, of something rushing at high speed throughthe water--that did not change. Terry rotated the mike through a fullcircle. The fish noises dwindled to almost nothing, and then increasedagain. The volume of the steady hum changed with them. But the rushingsound remained steady. Rather, it grew in loudness, as if approaching.But the directional microphone didn't register any difference, whetherit received sound from the north, east, south, or west.

  It was a booming sound. It was a rushing sound. It was the sound of anobject moving at terrific speed through the water. There was no enginenoise, but something thrust furiously through the sea, and the soundgrew louder and louder.

  "It's not coming from any compass course," said Terry shortly. "How deepis the water here?"

  "We're just over the edge of the Luzon Deep," said Davis. "Four thousandfathoms. Five. Maybe six."

  "Then it can only be coming from one direction," said Terry. "It'scoming from below. And it's coming up."

  For three heartbeats Davis stood perfectly still. Then he said, withextreme grimness, "Since you mention it, that would be where it's comingfrom."

  He turned away and shouted a few orders. The crewmen scurried swiftly.The yacht's head fell away from the wind. Terry listened again to therushing sound. There seemed to be regular throbbings in it, but still noengine noise. It was a steady drone.

  "Bazooka shells ought to discourage anything," Davis said in an icyvoice. "If it attacks, let go at it. But try to use the gun-camerasfirst."

  The _Esperance_ rolled and wallowed. Her bows lifted and fell. Her sailswere black against the starry sky overhead. Two of the crew-cuts settledthemselves at the starboard rail. They had long tubes in their hands,tubes whose details could not be seen. The wind hummed and thuttered inthe rigging. Reef-points pattered. Near the port rail the recorderpoured out the amplified sounds its microphone picked up from the sea.The sound of the coming thing became louder than all the other noisescombined. It was literally a booming noise. The water started to bubblefuriously as it parted to let something rise to the surface fromunthinkable depths.

  Doug put two magazine-rifles beside Terry and Deirdre, then he movedaway. Deirdre had a clumsy object in her hands. It had a rifle-stock anda trigger. What should have been the barrel was huge--six inches or morein diameter--but very short. That was the flashbulb reflector. Theactual camera was small and on top, like a sight.

  "We'll aim these at anything we see," said Deirdre composedly, "and pullthe trigger. Then we'll pick up the real rifles and see if we mustshoot. Is that all right?"

  She faced the shining patch of ocean. Davis and the crew-cut at thewheel faced that way. Tony and Jug stood with the clumsy tubes ofbazookas facing the same direction. Doug had taken a post forward, witha camera-gun and a magazine rifle. He had the camera in hand, to usefirst.

  It seemed that hours passed, but it must have been just a few minutes.Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be taking place anywhere. The moonnow shone down from a sky in which a few thin wisps of cloud glowedamong the stars. Sharp-peaked waves came from one horizon and spedbusily toward the other. The yacht pitched and rolled, its companystrangely armed and expectant. The recorder gave out a droning, booming,rushing sound which grew louder with ever-increasing rapidity. Now thesound reached a climax.

  From the very center of the glinting circle of sea, there was amonstrous splashing sound. A phosphorescent column rose furiously fromthe waves. It leaped. Water fell back and ... something soared into theair. Sharp, stabbing flashes of almost intolerably white light flaredup. The gun-cameras fired their flashbulbs without a sound.

  It was then that Terry saw it--in mid-air. He swung the gun-camera, anda flash from another gun showed him that he would miss. He jerked thegun to bear and pulled the trigger. The flash illuminated _it_ vividly.Then night again.

  It was torpedo-shaped and excessively slender but very long. It couldhave been a living thing, frozen by the instantaneous flash. It couldhave been something made of metal. It leaped a full fifty feet clear ofthe waves and then tumbled back into the ocean with a colossal splash.Then there was silence, except for the sounds of the sea. Terry had themagazine-rifle still in his hands. Tony and Jug waited with theirbazookas ready. It occurred to Terry that yachts are not customarilyarmed with bazookas.

  "That--wasn't a whale," said Deirdre unsteadily.

  The recorder bellowed suddenly. It was the hum that had been heardbefore: the nasty, sixty-cycle hum that surrounded the captive fish. Butit was ten, twenty, fifty times as loud as before.

  The fish in the bright-sea area went mad. The entire surface whippeditself to spray, as fish leaped frenziedly to get out of the water,which stung and burned where it touched.

  Then, very strangely, the splashing stopped. The brightness of the seadecreased. A while later the enormous snarling sound was noticeably lessloud than it had been at that first horrible moment.

  The wind blew. The waves raced. The _Esperance's_ bow lifted and dipped.The noise from the loudspeaker system--the noise from the sea--decreasedeven more. One could hear the squeakings and chitterings of fish again.But they were very much fainter. Presently the humming was no louderthan before the strange apparition. By that time the fish-sound had diedaway altogether. The nearer normal noises remained. The hum wasreceding. Downward.

  Davis came to Terry, where he stood by the recording instrument.

  "The fish have gone," he said in a flat voice, "they've gone away. Theydidn't scatter. We'd have seen it. Do you realize where they went?"

  Terry nodded.

  "Straight down. Do you want to hear an impossible explanation?"

  "I've thought of several," said Davis.

  Doug came and picked up the gun-cameras that Terry and Deirdre had usedand went away with them.

  "There's a kind of sound," said Terry, "that fish don't like. They won'tgo where it is. They try to get away from it."

  Deirdre said quietly, "I would too, if I were swimming."

  "Sound," said Terry, "in water as in air, can be reflected and directed,just as light can be. A megaphone turns out one's voice in a cone ofnoise, like a reflector on a light. It should be possible to project it.One can project a hollow cone of light. Why not a hollow cone of sound,in water?"

  Davis said with an unconvincingly ironic and skeptical air, "Indeed, whynot?"

  "If such a thing were done," said Terry, "then when the cone of soundwas turned on, the fish inside it would be captured as if by a conicalnet. They couldn't swim through the walls of sound. And then one canimagine the cone made smaller; the walls drawn closer together. The fishwould be crowded together in what was increasingly like a vertical,conical net, but with walls of unbearable noise instead of cord. Itwould be as if the sea were electrified and the fish were shocked whenthey tried to pass a given spot."

  "Preposterous, of course," said Davis. But his tone was not at allunbelieving.

  "Then suppose something were sent up to the top of the cone, and itprojected some kind of a cover of sound on the top of the cone andimprisoned the fish with a lid of sound they couldn't endure. And thensuppose that thing sank into the water again. The fish couldn't swimthrough the walls of noise around them. They couldn't swim th
rough thelid of sound above them. They'd have to swim downward, just as if a hoodwere closing on them from above."

  "Very neat," said Davis. "But of course you don't believe anything ofthe sort."

  "I can't imagine what would produce that sound in that way and send up acork of sound to take the fish below. And I can't imagine why it wouldbe done. So I can't say I believe it."

  Davis said slowly, "I think we begin to understand each other. We'llstay as close to this place as we can until dawn, when we will findnothing to show that anything out of the ordinary happened here."

  "Still less," said Terry, "to hint at its meaning. I've been doing sumsin my head. That bright water was almost solid with fish. I'd say therewas at least a pound of fish to every cubic foot of sea."

  "An underestimate," said Davis judicially.

  "When the bright patch was a thousand yards across--and it was evenmore--there'd have been four hundred tons of fish in the top three-footlayer."

  Davis seemed to start. But it was true. Terry added, "The water wasclear. We could see that the packing went on down a long way. Say fiftyyards at least."

  "Y-yes," agreed Davis. "All of that."

  "So in the top fifty yards, at one time, there were at least twentythousand tons of fish gathered together. Probably very much more. What_La Rubia_ carried away couldn't be noticed. All those thousands of tonsof fish were pushed straight down. Tell me," said Terry, "what would bethe point in all those fish being dragged to the bottom? I can't ask whoor what did it, or even why. I'm asking, what results from it?"

  Davis grunted.

  "My mind stalls on who or what and why. And I'd rather not mention myguesses. I.... No!"

  He moved abruptly away.

  The _Esperance_ remained under sail near the patch of sea that hadglittered earlier and now looked exactly like any other square mile ofocean. The recorder verified the position by giving out, faintly, thesame unpleasant humming noise, either louder or fainter. A soft warmwind blew across the waters. The land was somewhere below the horizon.The reel of recorder-tape ran out. It was notable that there were veryfew fish sounds to be heard, now. Very few. But the hum continued.

  Toward morning it stopped abruptly. Then there was nothing out of theordinary to be observed anywhere.

  The sun rose in magnificent colorings. The sky was clear of clouds.Again the waves looked like living, leaping, joyous things. Gulls weresquawking.

  Doug came up from belowdecks. He carried some photographic prints in hishand. He'd developed and printed what the gun-cameras had photographedwhen the mysterious object, or beast, leaped clear of the sea. Therewere seven different pictures. Four showed flashbulb-lighted sections ofempty ocean. One showed a column of sea water rising at fantastic heightfrom the sea. Another one showed the edge of something at the very edgeof the film.

  The seventh picture Terry recognized. It was what he'd seen when theflashbulb of his gun-camera went off. The focus was not sharp. But itwas neither a whale nor a blackfish--not even a small one--nor was it ashark. It was not a squid. It was not even a giant manta. The picturewas a blurry representation of something unreal made for an unimaginablepurpose, under abnormal conditions.

  Deirdre looked at it over his shoulder. It could be a living creature.It could be ... anything.

  "You said you didn't like mysteries," commented Deirdre. "Are you sorryyou came?"